The new Israeli government has provided great hope to Israel’s friends in America that its image is about to improve in American politics. The Bennett-Lapid government is historic in that it includes three votes from a Palestinian party– “the most inclusive government ever, with Arabs, women, and Jews of color holding vital cabinet ministries,” as Democratic Majority for Israel, a conservative lobby group, puts it. And liberal Zionists are happy because their allies in Israel, the Meretz and Labor parties, are back in government after more than a dozen years in exile, and the orthodox parties are on the outs, a real shift in Israel’s political culture.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz says the “diverse, inclusive coalition” gives her new energy to battle Israel’s enemies.
“We will never waver in our commitment to Israel’s security and defending Israel from those who aim to weaken or destroy to those who would spirited Jewish democratic and critical ally.”
Neoconservatives are also proud. Bret Stephens in the New York Times:
Israel’s new government must be a puzzle for anyone who thinks of the Jewish state as a racist, fascistic, apartheid enterprise.
Daniel Sokatch of New Israel Fund calls the new government “revolutionary” in the historic inclusion of the Palestinian Ra’am party.
This is a precedent that cannot be undone… Their inclusion in this coalition is a major victory for the legitimization of Arab citizens as full participants in Israel’s political process, and a win for democracy. it also contains the seeds of real change…
While Natan Sachs expressed pleasure in a Carnegie talk that Naftali Bennett said the word “bipartisan” in English in his first speech as Prime Minister, meaning that he won’t continue Netanyahu’s “terrible” decision to politicize Israel support in the U.S. J Street also hopes the “partisan wedge” goes away.
I’m a glass-half-full person but I think these hopes are misplaced. Israel’s p.r. problems, aren’t going away with the new rightwing PM, and are sure to continue once the honeymoon is over. “No, we’re not celebrating the Bennett-Lapid government either. Still apartheid and we still must organize,” the young Jewish group IfNotNow says. Last night Israel bombed Gaza again. “New government — same apartheid.”
Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch made the same point, apartheid.
If the new Israeli coalition government wants really “to repair Israeli ties with the US Democratic Party and the Jewish diaspora,” it could start dismantling apartheid in Occupied Palestinian Territory that the Netanyahu government did so much to build.
So, prominent figures in the U.S. establishment and the Jewish community and the left are committed to the discourse of “apartheid.” And despite the best efforts of the Israel lobby, this talk will not go away.
In her report on the new government for NBC Nightly News Sunday, Kelly Cobiella went to Sheikh Jarrah to highlight the protests against the evictions of Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlers. “Palestinians, under occupation for decades, are fighting for their homes and demanding freedom,” she said.
Cobiella gave the mic to protester Munjed Keloti who called Israel an anachronism:
What the hell is going on. Really we are in 2021– and this injustice is still happening? And supported by so many official entities… the U.S.A. for an example.
Rashid Khalidi made the same point about anachronism in a call last week with Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute, in which he said Israel faces a “decolonized future of equality.”
It’s out of time. They missed the boat. They could have gotten away with it in the 1800s. But not in the 21st century. Especially when they are so dependent on democratic countries.
Khalidi’s remarks are reminiscent of Tony Judt’s piece urging one democratic state back in 2003 that unleashed a firestorm of criticism from Zionists. Judt said then that Israel was an “anachronism: “the very idea of a ‘Jewish state’—a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded—is rooted in another time and place.”
Benjamin Netanyahu’s “biggest achievement” was that he was able to defuse the delegitimization discourse for 12 years, Anshel Pfeffer said on a Carnegie call Tuesday. The diplomatic “paradigm” was that “Israel will not have prosperity, will not have a western style of living, will not enjoy normal or good relations with the rest of the world if it does not solve the Palestinian issue.” But Netanyahu “reversed” that thinking. Israel did everything it could to destroy the possibility of a Palestinian state and limit Palestinian freedom, and it paid no price.
Now Joe Biden and Naftali Bennett share the desire to see the Palestinian issue go to sleep for another four years, Natan Sachs said on that Carnegie call yesterday. But that won’t happen.
Too many voices in Palestine and the U.S. are now pushing for Biden to do more. Human Rights Watch issued its “apartheid” finding because Israel had destroyed the two-state solution.
And it is now OK to use the word “apartheid” in criticizing Israel, just not if you are in mainstream politics. Segue to the outrage over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s statement that Israel and the United States are no more accountable for war crimes than Hamas and the Taliban. The “Jewish community” and the Democratic leadership and the pro-Israel media are all up in arms, and there is a push to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
But Omar has gotten a surprising amount of support for her comments a few steps away from the leadership. Mainstream folks are daring to support Omar in ways they would not have in the past. “A lot of my colleagues overreacted to her remarks,” Rep. John Yarmuth of KY said yesterday. Yarmuth said Omar is singled out for censure because she is Black, female, and Muslim. Elizabeth Bruenig has an excellent piece in the Atlantic describing the Omar outrage as a “ridiculous controversy” in which party leaders try to cement the donor base of the party by bashing Omar for comments they know to be true.
Omar has been a passionate ally of Palestinians embattled by Israeli assaults on Gaza, a position that has won her as few friends in the donor class as her steadfast advocacy for the poor, if not fewer. For the Democrats, who seem to believe that their midterm fortunes rest as far from the left as they can possibly tack, knocking out Omar is just a convenient electoral move, and this ridiculous controversy merely a pretext. Maybe all they wanted was to bully her a little, remind the viewing public who’s behind the party’s wheel, in case anyone had worried that it would ever, in any universe, be somebody like Ilhan Omar.
Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor of the Atlantic… And David Harris of the American Jewish Committee is complaining that leading voices in the Jewish community are no longer defending Israel. It’s a Humpty Dumpty situation…. one that Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid will be able to do nothing about.
h/t Donald Johnson, Michael Arria, Adam Horowitz, Allison Deger, Scott Roth, James North.
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“B’Tselem, a human rights organization in Israel, and Human Rights Watch have documented and denounced the continuing maltreatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government and the settler movement, including the confiscation of Palestinians’ lands and houses; the restrictions on movement; the limitations on rights of free speech and assembly; the denial of building permits; the denial of many basic civil rights and the terrorizing by Jewish settler extremists backed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Human Rights Watch has concluded that conduct toward the Palestinians amounts to persecution and apartheid, which are crimes against humanity under international law.
“”We recently witnessed the brutal bombing of Gaza, where 2 million Palestinians have been strangled by a 14-year blockade. Using the most sophisticated weaponry made in the United States, the IDF has targeted civilian population centers, hitting 18 hospitals and clinics, apartment buildings and killing scores of children and other innocent bystanders.
“I ask myself: How is it possible that the victims of the Holocaust and their progeny can so brutally victimize another people on racial grounds? I ask myself why Palestinians don’t have the same rights to reparations and return afforded to my family after Germany accepted responsibility for their crimes. Shouldn’t Palestinians be entitled to reparations and the right of return? Shouldn’t they have the same rights to self-determination that Israel itself claims?”
“I am deeply ashamed and angry that these acts are committed in the name of the Jewish people and that my government provides the money and arms to support these Israeli crimes.”
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Germany Gave My Family Reparations. Palestinians Deserve the Same From Israel. (truthout.org)
“Germany Gave My Family Reparations. Palestinians Deserve the Same From Israel.” Jane Hirschmann, Truthout, June 14/21
EXCERPT:”I am a first-generation American. My Jewish parents fled Germany as the horrors of the Holocaust were unfolding. They left behind family who perished in camps and were killed as they fled from their homes while being chased and shot at by Nazis.My great-grandfather, grandfather and father had a thriving butcher business in Frankfurt. They lived in the apartment building next to the butcher shop. My father always said he barely realized he was Jewish until Hitler arrived. It was always Deutschland über alles.
“My mother’s family were wheat traders in Wetzlar. After the rise of Hitler, my mother fled Germany first so that she could learn the language in her new country and make enough money to bring over her parents and brother. They came to the U.S. without much money and like many, had to build a life from the bottom up.
“Once the war was over, Germany gave my father reparations for the loss of his business as well as for the crime of persecution. He received a monthly check until his death at the age of 91. Both of my parents were welcomed back by the German government and told they could get their passports and citizenship returned.
“Those born to Holocaust survivors who can prove that their father was forced from his homeland between the years 1933-1945 have the right to become German citizens along with all of their children, grandchildren and all future progeny forever. Last year, my children, grandchildren and I became German citizens, and were given European passports.
“As I think about my own family and its history, I wonder why the 750,000 Palestinians forced from their homes and land in 1948 when Israel was founded are not entitled to the same treatment my family received after WWII ended. But the war on Palestinians was never over. Instead, Israel continues to this day its policy of ethnic cleansing, as evidenced by the current expulsions in Sheikh Jarrah and other parts of East Jerusalem. (cont’d)
Terrific article Phil. And so true.The situation is really horrific and the fact that Biden supports Bennet and his crew is in my view a disgrace.
Today the NYT ran an editorial about Naftali Bennet to the effect that he’s not what he seems to be, he’s actually a thoughtful, deep guy with nuanced positions!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/opinion/naftali-bennett-israel-prime-minister.html
Gone was the sneering, indelicate Mr. Bennett, the politician who once responded to a provocation from a Knesset member, Ahmad Tibi, with “We already had a Jewish state here when you were still climbing up trees.”…The Mr. Bennett I met with over the next three days in Buenos Aires was an engaged leader with a supple, sophisticated mind. The gap between his private and public personas seemed vast and mystifying. My respect for Mr. Bennett the man grew even as my esteem for Mr. Bennett the politician waned. It seemed that something prevented him from sharing his full complexity with the Israeli public.
Israeli politics has not changed. It’s still Erez Israel Hashlemah BS.
But the situation on the ground has changed. This FT article is superb
https://www.ft.com/content/20741506-d674-4090-a93c-0d308e6bf68a
The self-absorption of Israel’s politics, sharpened by four inconclusive elections in two years, has been blown apart — less by the 11-day armed conflict with Hamas in Gaza than by Palestinians, including those with Israeli citizenship, uniting in revolt across the entire area under Israel’s control.
Longer term, a rightwing-dominated Israeli political elite that assumed it had domesticated Palestinians by colonising their land is confronted with an uprising across Greater Israel, with Arab Israelis making common cause with their brethren under occupation. Having rejected a two-state solution — an independent Palestine alongside Israel — Israel’s politicians face having to manage a de facto single state. This has roughly equal Arab and Jewish populations, but with such disparity of rights it is described by critics as an apartheid state. The idea that the occupation was somehow a settled issue that Palestinians had been forced to accept is over. Israel has never been held accountable for settling the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem after it conquered them in the 1967 six-day war.
This month’s rebellion may change that. Israel is now fighting a Palestinian revolt on three fronts: against Hamas, which controls Gaza and fired over 4,000 rockets at Israeli cities and towns during the recent conflict; against Palestinians with Israeli nationality, now in vicious communal strife with their Jewish neighbours; and against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Netanyahu profits for now from the Gaza clash, the fourth war with Hamas since 2009. Yet he has discarded his diplomatic tools and, with the most powerful military in the region, looks unable to stop a rag-tag army firing outsized pipe bombs from a blockaded enclave. A new generation of Palestinian activists is emerging within Israel as well as the occupied territories, independent of Fatah, the traditional nationalists, and Islamist Hamas. It has struck a chord internationally. As its leadership emerges, it will demand real elections, which have not been held in the occupied territories since 2006. These would bury a Fatah led